Europe Sweden To help Ukrainian refugees start work by streamlining administrative processes, a coordination number will soon be issued by the Migration Board to Ukrainian refugees who have obtained a residence permit with temporary protection
Europe Sweden The Left Party leader has called for a referendum on the country's likely NATO candidacy; the Left Party is against it and believes that military non-alignment is the best basis for an independent foreign policy for peace and disarmament
Europe Sweden Debates are underway over the government's pension budget, in particular the proposal for a guaranteed supplement for the country's poorest pensioners, about half a million people
Europe Sweden Like Finland, the country took a major step towards NATO membership on Wednesday, after their PMs said Russia's invasion of Ukraine had changed "the entire security landscape" of Europe and "dramatically shaped the mindset" in the Nordic countries
Europe Sweden Sweden's operational PV capacity reached 1.59GW at the end of December, up from 1.09GW a year earlier, according to the Swedish Energy Agency; the country has about 92.360 PV installations, with about 26.500 added last year
Europe Sweden The country will become the 22nd country to remove all entry requirements, as the current ban on travellers from outside the EU/EEA, which expires today, will not be extended
Europe Sweden The Migration Agency has asked for help from "anyone who can provide it" to cope with the flow of Ukrainian refugees; 3.500 Ukrainians have already applied for asylum in the country, of whom 900 have received help from the agency to find accommodation
Europe Sweden Swedish carmaker Volvo has suspended production and sales of its commercial vehicles at its plant in Kaluga, Russia, as sign of dissent towards war; the factory employs 700 people and a further 600 are involved in sales, maintenance and repairs
Europe Sweden The country's position on not joining NATO was reiterated by the prime minister, who noted that Russia does not have an alarming threat and military activity on Sweden's borders
Europe Sweden Muslim migrant families have protested against the state social services for unfairly taking their children from their homes; many claim there are different criteria for the children of Muslim migrants and those of Swedes
Europe Sweden The country is trialling a system to improve its emergency response services; it features drones delivering defibrillators, with drone developer Everdrone collaborating with researchers at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm from 2019
Europe Sweden Police are looking for 10.000 migrants with deportation orders, according to a report by the public broadcaster Sveriges Television; according to the head of the national border police the problem is that there are no detention centres for deportations
Europe Sweden With Finland and Norway, the country will cull part of the wolf population to control their diffusion; as the hunters have already killed most of their annual target of 27 wolves, several conservation groups have appealed to the EU to take action